Transfer Day Shenangians

Let it be no surprise that something always goes wrong on transfer day. But that’s okay, because God in His infinite foreknowledge prepares a way for His work to move forward, despite the mistakes made along the way. We basically just drove around the whole transfer day and got the items to all the missionaries that had forgotten them. It all began as we waited in Langley for the transfer bus to arrive. Once the bus arrived missionaries hopped off, bags were unloaded, and a few missionaries including my companion, Elder Blake got on. My new companion Elder Ellis gets off the bus, and at least for us, it was the smoothest transfer.

We then received a call from a missionary in our zone that he left his Tiwi driver card in a vehicle parked at the mission office. Before we began our trip to Richmond, we noticed that there were two bags that had been left. To our surprise it belonged to none of the missionaries that were with us. We sent a quick message to the APs, and they responded it belonged to Elder Dessi and we needed to bring them to the 140th chapel in Surrey if that was possible. So I guess we’ll just make another stop on the way to Richmond. So we cram all the bags in the little Saburu and begin our journey. As we travel, we receive a call from the mission office. Sounds like there’s a set of missionaries that don’t have keys to their apartment in our Zone. The good news was we are already on our way to Richmond and will pick up the keys when we get there. The APs then call us, and tell us when we get Elder Dessi his bags, we need to take him and his companion, Elder Astle to the mission office. They totally forgot that they needed to get a vehicle. Now that we have two Elders in the back seat, we are really cramming for space. In an effort to make this work, we grabbed Elder Ellis’ bags and threw them in the church. Moved forward our seats and jammed everything in. Luckily, by the grace of God, everything worked out great.

The journey to Richmond has now begun. At this point, we are going to Richmond for a lot more reasons than just grabbing a Tiwi card, so I guess it was a lot more worth the trip haha. Once we arrive, Elder Astle and Elder Dessi get the keys to their new vehicle, and we move everything over. We retrieved the Tiwi card, got the keys for the sisters apartment, and just as we thought our job was finished, we got talking to Sister Crawford in the mission office; she needed to get the keys to the Surrey Stake Center to the Portuguese Elders. Luckily, we were already planning on stopping by the 140th Surrey church building, where those Elders are at, to retrieve Elder Ellis’ bags on the way back. So we grabbed the keys to get to them.

We drove back to Surrey, reunited with Elder Ellis’ bags, and gave the Portuguese Elders their keys. We then drove back to Langley, met the sisters at the temple and gave them their apartment keys. What a day! I’m sure this was super exciting to read about, now you have a taste of transfer day. If you’ve read this far, first of all, I commend you, and second, I promise the rest of the email should hopefully be a lot more interesting to read.

Members are Everywhere Here

This was pretty much my first time going out and walking around the area solely focused on in person finding. We went to this busy area downtown next to a park in the hopes that we’d meet some YSA in our endeavors. As we walked next to the park, a member noticed us, and wanted to talk with us. He was super excited as he thought that we were the new set of Elders that Brookswood was getting (they’ve only had sisters for a while). But when we told him we were the YSA Elders, his excitement quickly left him haha. Quick side note, the new Brookswood Elders are, Elder Astle and Elder Dessi, and they are housing with us which is kinda cool. When we told him that we were living together, his excitement came back. He then shared with us that his son was telling him that he never sees the missionaries walking around outside. And when he saw us he was like, look! Missionaries in the wild! So either way, despite not being the new Brookswood Elders, they were excited to see us haha.

We walked some more, talked to a few people, sat down, messaged people for half an hour. As we began walking we saw a very nice car drive by, and the guy in the car waves at us. At this moment, we realize that it’s the Surrey Stake President and his wife, President Engan and Sister Engan. They both are so awesome! Not to rank it or anything, but he is definitely at the top of my list for my favorite Stake President to work with. Anyways, we walk to Tim Horton’s and hop onto a bunch of Facebook groups that would have YSA audiences, in the hopes of locating more spots that would be successful. We spent about an hour doing this and walking back to our car. By the time we got back, President Engan pulls up beside us and rolls down the window. He then asks if we are the new Brookswood Elders. Man, the anticipation for these new Elders is crazy! The fact that he tracked us down again, an hour after just to talk with us is pretty crazy haha. I’m surprised we ran into each other again. It was good to talk to them though. I’m grateful for the opportunity.

Later in the evening, we had language study, so we were figuring out where to go. I normally never go to McDonald’s to just sit and work on stuff other than eating, but I felt that we needed to go. Once we arrived I worked on the laptop on my assignment, and Elder Ellis studied Farsi on his assignment. A member notices us and begins to talk with us. He said he’s from Prince George and his name was Brother Silver. I was like, oh no way! I served in Prince George, sadly we just missed each other (he wasn’t up there when I was there), but it was good to see him. He bought us both fudge ice cream so that was super sweet! It’s crazy how many different members we met today, pretty neat to look back on.

As we were about to leave, a high-school student who was sitting near us noticed the Book of Mormon and asked us about it. He said that he’s Christian and has a friend who goes to our church and he wanted to learn more about what the Book of Mormon is. We gave him a brief run down and he seemed very curious and intrigued. He asked lots of really good questions, and we bounced all over the place. Overall it was a really awesome experience, we gave him a copy of it, and a Restoration Proclamation, and if he wants to meet with missionaries he’ll sign up and his records will go to the right set of missionaries.

Welcome back to Spiritual Hogwarts!

Last week, the Willoughby Elders met a YSA guy while street contacting. They said that he’s currently attending a seminary in Mission and is interested in learning more about the Book of Mormon. I won’t record his name here, for the sake of privacy. But, he attends the Westminster Abbey Monastery. He asked that we meet him on the seminary grounds, as he can only leave them once a month. He then messaged us asking if it would be okay if his friend joined us as well. At this point we are both expecting to get absolutely bashed. But you know, it will be my first time in Mission so that’ll be sweet! I was also looking forward to seeing the seminary grounds, it looked pretty epic on Google Maps. Once we arrived, I got to say, it definitely did not disappoint! It reminded me so much of the Missionary Training Center. It takes you up this big hill that overlooks all of Mission. As we drove in, there’s a big open field on the right. We saw a Catholic Priest playing Frisbee, and on our left they had a few buildings and a church. Near the guest area, where we planned on meeting, we saw two young guys standing, one had a blue book in hand. I couldn’t tell if it was the Book of Mormon, but I felt that it was them.

We then got out of the vehicle, they came over to us, and we began to chat. They were so cool! Very nice and sincere guys, the one we were texting was our age, and his friend was 25. It was so funny! When his friend heard that he was meeting with “the Mormons” he was like, “I’ve never met a Mormon before, I’d love to meet them too!” So he came along just to meet us. We talked and walked around the campus and they took us to an overlook point. The experience was incredible, because in a lot of ways we saw how similar we were. They were studying to become priests. They lived on campus and would do their schooling there. I believe they said the program was about nine years, so you are definitely in it for the long run. When we arrived at the lookout point, it was incredible! Really wish I was able to get some pictures, we were focused on chatting with and teaching them, so didn’t really get the chance. But next time! We’ll definitely get some, they also said they will show us the church too!

We shared with them what the Book of Mormon is, the Restoration, and acquiring Spiritual truth. So many random things come up, I was talking about receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, the day of the Pentecost, spiritual gifts being present, and with the restoration those gifts are available to us today. Meetings are filled with revelation. The Lord’s Apostles and Prophet are on the earth today. I shared that they can walk into a room full of people they don’t know personally, but feel the sense of love that they and God have for them. And then go on guided by the Spirit and prophesy exactly what those people need to hear and what they need, without knowing them. This is the Lord’s Living Church, flowing with revelation all over the world. I told them that without a shadow of a doubt I knew of a surety that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. He was pretty intrigued, he was like, “without a shadow of a doubt, that’s pretty big. How do you know with a surety?” I responded, “the Book of Mormon.” That is the strongest evidence of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling. I told him, if he could prove to me how Joseph Smith was able to write the Book of Mormon and deceive all the witnesses, then I wouldn’t be able to stand without a shadow of a doubt. But the Book of Mormon stands firm, and I know that it is the work of God.

You know when Nephi says, “the Spirit of the Lord constraineth me that I should speak.” Yeah. I kinda experienced that a bit. Because I definitely wouldn’t have said what I did. It was just a bit bold haha. I’m just glad that these guys were super chill and curious, they genuinely wanted to learn more. Both of them were super nice, really hope that we are able to meet them again! They were actually surprised that we came, they thought we wouldn’t show up at the seminary haha.

Social Media Meeting

I’m seeing a lot of parallels between this transfer and my 4th transfer. It seems that I’m starting a new assignment and this was our first meeting with the Gills. Last transfer was the experimental transfer when they first extended the assignment, and now this is the refinement transfer now that we are going to meetings again. Very much the same when I received the mission technology specialist assignment mid-way through my second transfer. I then did it for my third, and then Elder Evans became my companion in my fourth and we had our first meeting in Richmond together. And from there, the rest is history. We began going to Zone Conferences and the assignment got really refined. It’s kinda going the same way now, which is quite interesting to look back on. We’ll see what the future yields.

As for the meeting, it was pretty good. I shared how important it is to produce local British Columbia content for the page. Focus on the events and the people here. Show people the message of the gospel rather than telling them. I shared a few examples, shooting a service video at the inter-faith food hampers event, showing a family attending church–interview them and then show them doing family home evening and focusing on church at home, ward temple trip, etc.

The Gill’s were concerned about how much time we were spending creating content for the page. He doesn’t want the assignment to take away from the rest of the work. He asked the social media sisters, and then us, as for how long it takes. And honestly the part that takes the longest, is gathering together the footage; putting it together is the quick part.

We also talked about making sure the videos look consistent. I shared the Christ’s First Light media kit, which basically makes it super easy for the sisters where they can drag and drop transitions, subtitles, and the outros. This way we can keep the page high quality while still maintaining a uniform look.

Sister Gill asked us why don’t we just repost church content. The church has already provided so much high quality content, her point was, there’s no reason we should be spending time and resources making posts if we can easily just repost what’s already made. I shared that that’s great, and reposting is very important for personal profiles, but we are a Facebook page. The expectation is that this page offers content that you can’t find on any other page. This is the page for finding Christ in British Columbia, not in Washington, not in Salt Lake, but in B.C. So it’s very important to offer localized content. Also reposts don’t actually reach anyone on a page level, only those who are already following the page. But you can make a reel version of a video and post it and that would be great!

The sisters have also finally learned the importance of focusing on reels. After I’ve explained to them and I think after they’ve seen the impact that it’s made so far, they’ve come to the same conclusions. So I’m glad that they are finally on board!

When we concluded the meeting President, he shared that he agrees with Sister Gill and the Social Media Sisters to repost church content in reels. But he felt something when I was talking about showing the members, families, and temple trips happening in B.C. He calls this member profiling. He shared that we’ll go from here, and we’ll probably have another meeting in the near future. It sounds like this new member profiling assignment will continue to stay after I’m gone. My job is to get things started and ready to go for those that proceed me. Not going to lie, kinda sounds familiar.